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It was 2 AM. I was too trou­bled to sleep. It had been a dis­heart­en­ing day.
The phone rang. I picked it up.
Before I could even say “hel­lo,” a voice made a slow, men­ac­ing chant:
“Meeeeee­owwww. Meeeeeee­owwww. Meeeeoooowwwww.”
My blood ran cold.

I have no inten­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ing melo­dra­ma. What I intend to recount will not be exag­ger­at­ed, nor will it be undu­ly min­i­mized. I will, of course, describe how I felt about the events. I will leave the read­er to judge events by their own lights.

Reg­u­lar read­ers and cor­re­spon­dents will have noticed that I have pub­lished noth­ing in more than sev­en months, and that even my metic­u­lous­ly kept read­ing, lis­ten­ing and view­ing logs have been either late or entire­ly absent. I will be the first to admit that the last few years have been a rough time for me, that my ener­gy has been deplet­ed, my spir­it strained, and my peren­ni­al opti­mism chal­lenged. But, fear not. The Rook and Bish­op still pro­tect the King.

It began with a can­cer diag­no­sis, which of course was fright­en­ing. But I soon found myself in com­pe­tent hands. The can­cer was a com­mon one, it had been caught ear­ly enough, and the nec­es­sary dai­ly radi­a­tion treat­ment and med­ica­tion were applied prompt­ly. I did not find this any strain on my fun­da­men­tal­ly pos­i­tive atti­tude. As it stands today, my oncol­o­gist con­sid­ers the can­cer effec­tive­ly defeat­ed. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I devel­oped anoth­er ail­ment either trig­gered by, or at least coin­ci­dent with the radi­a­tion treat­ment. It has two very dis­tinct char­ac­ter­is­tics, name­ly, that it is no threat to my life, but it is extreme­ly painful. And so, for the last two years, my life has been dom­i­nat­ed by pain, and my mobil­i­ty has been severe­ly lim­it­ed. There is no need to go into med­ical details. Suf­fice it to say that much of my time has been dom­i­nat­ed by phys­i­cal pain, rang­ing from being irri­tat­ing to being ago­niz­ing ― and some­times the sort of sen­sa­tion you would get if you put your hand on a hot stove ele­ment. It’s com­ing and going is unpre­dictable, but it is rarely absent. Pain has become so nor­mal to me, that I actu­al­ly have trou­ble remem­ber­ing what it was like to live with­out it.

I am some­one who has built his life around walk­ing. Most of my great­est times of plea­sure have been hikes in wild coun­try, explor­ing places on foot, scram­bling over ancient archae­o­log­i­cal sites or just ami­ably strolling in pleas­ant land­scapes. Yet for the last two years, I’ve been more or less trapped in my apart­ment and denied such plea­sures. Some­times I’ve been able to walk around nor­mal­ly for a few hours, but more often just ten or fif­teen min­utes of walk­ing has trig­gered extreme pain, and I have been forced to sit still in a fixed pose until it dies down enough for my brain to func­tion nor­mal­ly. Walk­ing, when it’s been pos­si­ble, has been loaded with new dan­gers. My sense of bal­ance has been affect­ed, and I have had six sud­den and painful falls, where sen­sa­tion sud­den­ly van­ished from my legs and I was thrown onto con­crete pave­ment instan­ta­neous­ly. On two occa­sions, this result­ed in some bleed­ing cuts and alarm­ing bruis­es, and on one occa­sion it result­ed in a shat­tered right elbow, requir­ing imme­di­ate surgery. The surgery was, as I expect­ed, top notch, and I cur­rent­ly have about 90% use of my right arm. One humor­ous side­bar: When I was being dri­ven by ambu­lance to the emer­gency room, the para­medics asked me why I appeared so cheer­ful and wasn’t weep­ing or scream­ing. In truth, I had become so used to extreme pain that a shat­tered elbow didn’t feel par­tic­u­lar­ly alarm­ing. I had suf­fered more intense­ly the pre­vi­ous evening just sit­ting at home. The ambu­lance jour­ney was more or less a lark, and I enjoyed their com­pa­ny. Para­medics are my kind of people.

Now, the last two years have not been uni­form­ly mis­er­able. Much of the time, the pain has been tol­er­a­ble, and occa­sion­al­ly entire­ly absent. On the very street where my elbow would lat­er be pul­ver­ized, I was sip­ping cof­fee and read­ing Gogol in one of my favourite cafes. There, I received a phone call inform­ing me that I had won the Dal­ton Camp Award. This is a quite pres­ti­gious nation­al award for jour­nal­is­tic belles-let­tres.  It was accom­pa­nied by a sculpt­ed medal­lion by a glob­al­ly renowned artist, as well as some media inter­views. Con­grat­u­la­to­ry let­ters arrived from a nation­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed colum­nist, some his­to­ri­ans, and a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. My writ­ing is nor­mal­ly con­fined to a small, spe­cial­ized com­mu­ni­ty of schol­ars, and such recog­ni­tion was pre­vi­ous­ly unknown to me. It was very grat­i­fy­ing. More­over, my life has exposed me to enough of the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers to put my own into per­spec­tive. While the last two years have been chal­leng­ing, I’ve known many peo­ple who have endured much worse. I’ve wit­nessed, dur­ing my var­i­ous adven­tures, suf­fer­ing inflict­ed on inno­cent peo­ple that would reduce any of my com­plaints to triv­i­al­i­ty. It’s those very expe­ri­ences that impose upon me the respon­si­bil­i­ty of reject­ing depres­sion and self-pity. But, these cir­cum­stances, espe­cial­ly when I’ve spent most of my life in good health, did require some but­tress­ing of morale.

Such but­tress­ing was plen­ti­ful. I have a small, but superb coterie of friends. They have all been splen­did. I have not lacked for help when need­ed. But con­sid­er­able emo­tion­al sup­port came from an addi­tion­al quar­ter: my two cats, Thomp­son and Macken­zie. If the dis­gust­ing lit­tle creep known as J. D. Vance showed up in my pres­ence, you can only imag­ine the tongue lash­ing I would sub­ject him to, let alone his par­ty col­league who boast­ed of exe­cut­ing her pup­py in a grav­el pit. It is Macken­zie, the gin­ger cat, who plays the lead role in the dra­ma I am here recounting.

Macken­zie was always the less adven­tur­ous of the two cats, who are from the same lit­ter. A bit chub­bier, more timid, but warm­ly affec­tion­ate and equipped with a lawn mow­er purr. I learned in the begin­ning that he dis­liked being touched in the bel­ly, so I avoid­ed doing that. There was a rea­son for that, which I did not yet under­stand. Thomp­son, by con­trast, could soak up an infi­nite amount of pet­ting, rough-hous­ing and bel­ly tick­les. Both cats were good com­pa­ny as I sat for­lorn­ly try­ing to wish away light­ning-like jolts of pain, or strug­gled to fall asleep. Last sum­mer, tragedy struck Macken­zie. He went total­ly blind, began to have dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing, and lost weight and bulk. At first, he respond­ed to this sud­den calami­ty with pan­ic and ter­ror, lash­ing out with his paw at any­thing that approached him and creep­ing around after sounds to fight the demons he imag­ined to be tor­ment­ing him. He was suf­fer­ing from a rare afflic­tion called poly­melia, which appar­ent­ly occurs to one cat in a mil­lion, and can also occur in humans in rare instances. Macken­zie had six legs. At first the extra pair of legs were tiny and buried invis­i­bly in his bel­ly fur, but by the time he became blind they had begun to grow, and one of them grew big enough to sport sharp claws. The blind­ness, the dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing, the shat­ter­ing effect on his mind, and the dra­mat­ic loss of weight were all part of an attack on the struc­ture of his body, as these unwant­ed limbs grew out of him. There was noth­ing that could be done for him direct­ly, oth­er than to hope that his con­di­tion would sta­bi­lize and that he would be able to adjust psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly to his con­di­tion. He and Thomp­son were close pals, rarely sep­a­rate. But in his fear and fury, Macken­zie attacked Thomp­son, and their broth­er­ly bond was broken. 

My nur­tur­ing instincts kicked in. Though I had to suf­fer some nasty scratch­es, I lav­ished affec­tion on Macken­zie. As time passed, he calmed down. Even­tu­al­ly, he respond­ed pos­i­tive­ly to my min­is­tra­tions. The fear and anger abat­ed, and he became extreme­ly affec­tion­ate, snug­gling up to me to sleep, and fol­low­ing me around. Slow­ly, the two cats regained trust in each oth­er. But Macken­zie had clear­ly suf­fered brain dam­age. He was often con­fused, and some­times would walk for min­utes in tight cir­cles. He would obses­sive­ly try to push him­self into tight cor­ners. He no longer purred. He was a half of his for­mer self.

This hap­pened dur­ing the worst of my own strug­gles with pain, when it was more intense and more dev­as­tat­ing to me than it is now. Under such cir­cum­stances, the ther­a­peu­tic effect of car­ing for anoth­er crea­ture, allow­ing me to step out­side myself, was cru­cial to my own abil­i­ty to accept ongo­ing pain. I think I would have been much more cow­ard­ly, and much more mis­er­able and self-pity­ing if it weren’t for the exam­ple of this brave lit­tle blind cat strug­gling with an incom­pre­hen­si­ble assault on his body and mind.

Once Macken­zie had over­come the worst of his chal­lenges, he became able to join Thomp­son in what had pre­vi­ous­ly been their prin­ci­ple source of fun. They both loved to hang out in the cor­ri­dor, just out­side my apart­ment door. I live in a hun­dred-year-old apart­ment build­ing. I know all the ten­ants on my floor, and all of them are famil­iar with both cats. Most of these neigh­bours not only tol­er­at­ed the two cats, but enjoyed feed­ing them treats and pet­ting them. The four dogs on the floor were all friends with them, even includ­ing the big clum­sy dog belong­ing to the artist next door. As Macken­zie gained some weight and lost his ter­ror, he found some­thing of his old self by sit­ting by my door, and was fine with being pet­ted by any­one. He would not, how­ev­er, ven­ture far from the door.

Such was the sit­u­a­tion on the evening of June 29. Toron­to Pride was in full swing, and I live on the edge of Toronto’s Gay Vil­lage. I was swamped with work, how­ev­er, since I could only do seri­ous work when I was with­in brief win­dows of min­i­mal pain. I let Thomp­son and Macken­zie hang out in the cor­ri­dor while I attend­ed to some cor­re­spon­dence with an archae­ol­o­gist in Europe. Usu­al­ly, I would check on them every few min­utes, but in this case, I remained at the com­put­er for more time than usu­al. There was no con­ceiv­able dan­ger to either cat, both being well known to every ten­ant on the floor, and pro­tect­ed from the world beyond the build­ing by three con­sec­u­tive heavy spring-dri­ven doors and a stair­case. So when I did check up on them, and I saw only Thomp­son in the cor­ri­dor, I assumed that Macken­zie had come back into the apart­ment and set­tled down in one of his many hid­ing spots. I had not had a chance to see the huge Pride fes­tiv­i­ties on Church Street yet, and I was not in pain, so I fig­ured I could ven­ture out to enjoy the fun, and if the pain start­ed up, I would only have two blocks to walk home. Deal­ing with such cal­cu­la­tions had become rou­tine. So I called Thomp­son in, locked the apart­ment door behind me, and ven­tured out for a stroll. I was gone an hour before the pain start­ed to build, as it usu­al­ly does, and slinked home with the plan of tak­ing a mar­i­jua­na gum­my and min­i­miz­ing move­ment. When I got home, Thomp­son was right at the door, behav­ing odd­ly. He greet­ed me with a strange sound­ing meow even before I could open the door, and when I did, he dashed out, look­ing anx­ious and per­plexed. I looked around for Macken­zie. Some­times he would hide in very obscure places, reg­u­lar­ly find­ing new ones to chal­lenge me. But as I searched more and more thor­ough­ly, it became obvi­ous that some­thing was very wrong.

That evening, I more or less dis­as­sem­bled the apart­ment. I searched every cor­ner of the three sto­ry build­ing, and out­side it. Macken­zie was nowhere to be found. Even­tu­al­ly, I had to con­clude that the impos­si­ble had hap­pened: he had some­how got­ten out­side. That this could have hap­pened acci­den­tal­ly was incon­ceiv­able. He could not have got­ten through even the first door, no mat­ter how dis­tract­ed some pass­ing ten­ant might have been. Macken­zie could only move at a slow pace, was total­ly blind, and he was phys­i­cal­ly weak. That he could get unseen through three doors, includ­ing the locked out­er door, was patent­ly impos­si­ble. It would have been phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble for him to go down a stair­case. There was no way of escap­ing the con­clu­sion that some­body had pur­pose­ly snatched him, gone through all three doors and chucked him out­side on the street! If some­one had attempt­ed to do that with Thomp­son, there would have been a ruckus, and Thomp­son would have made mince­meat of any stranger try­ing to grab him. But lit­tle, harm­less, blind Macken­zie would have been easy to grab and would have been inca­pable of struggling.

By the next morn­ing, I was plas­ter­ing the neigh­bour­hood with posters. They described Macken­zie, explain­ing his blind­ness and fragili­ty, and gave my phone num­ber for any­one to call. I made enquiries every­where I could think of. Every pet food store and vet­eri­nary office was alert­ed. The ani­mal shel­ters were closed for the hol­i­day week­end, but I kept an eye on every new entry on their web­site until they were sched­uled to reopen their phone lines.

Even­tu­al­ly, infor­ma­tion came. The street in front of my build­ing had been busy with par­ty-goers head­ing to and from the fes­tiv­i­ties in the vil­lage. Macken­zie had been seen, appar­ent­ly injured, and col­lect­ed by strangers. He some­how wound up in an ani­mal shel­ter in far­away Eto­bi­coke. When their phone line final­ly opened, I was giv­en the news I dread­ed. I was not told the extent of Mackenzie’s injuries, so I’m not sure how much that played a role in his fate. What I did quick­ly learn was that the shel­ter had mis­in­ter­pret­ed his scrawni­ness and blind­ness for extreme dehy­dra­tion. In truth, he was well fed and con­tent when he was snatched away. They assumed from his appear­ance that he had been aban­doned for a great deal of time. They decid­ed to put him to sleep. This was done short­ly before I was able to call them.

As you can imag­ine, Mackenzie’s cru­el death was dis­turb­ing to me. But it was not near­ly as dis­turb­ing as what hap­pened at 2 AM, the fol­low­ing night.

The phone rang. I picked it up.

A voice made a slow, men­ac­ing chant:
“Meeeeee­owwww. Meeeeeee­owwww. Meeeeoooowwwww.”

Mackenzie’s mur­der­er was call­ing me to gloat. I knew instinc­tive­ly that I must not react. Who­ev­er this psy­chopath was, he would clear­ly want me to react. I knew bet­ter. I know a thing or two about psy­chopaths. I would not give him the plea­sure. The mee­ow­ing con­tin­ued for a bit, stopped, and the phone went dead. So far, the num­ber I was called with defies tracing. 

I’ve lived in my build­ing for a cou­ple of decades. I’m a famil­iar fig­ure, and the two cats were famil­iar fig­ures. I know every­one on the floor, and remain on good terms with every­body. The only per­son­al con­flict I had expe­ri­enced in the build­ing was three years before, with a man who had briefly been the build­ing man­ag­er. Short­ly after being hired, this man had start­ed aggres­sive­ly berat­ing ten­ants, and even threat­en­ing sev­er­al of them. I was one of the ten­ants that he crude­ly threat­ened. He was pret­ty obvi­ous­ly unsta­ble. Short­ly after threat­en­ing me (“If you cross me, you’ll see what hap­pens to you!”) he was fired by the man­age­ment. When I men­tioned what had hap­pened to the new build­ing man­ag­er, he asked me to pro­vide a writ­ten state­ment about being threat­ened. I pre­sume the own­ers want­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion so that the thug could not con­test his fir­ing. This inci­dent didn’t even come to my mind until more than a week after Mackenzie’s death. After all, it had tak­en place years before, and I didn’t even remem­ber the man’s name, nor would I even rec­og­nize him by sight. My inter­ac­tion with him had been brief. Yet, he is the only sus­pect that I can think of. He could eas­i­ly have kept build­ing keys, and any­one famil­iar with the build­ings could eas­i­ly enough get in with­out them. How­ev­er, he is long gone. This pre­sumes hold­ing a grudge for years, and act­ing on an oppor­tu­ni­ty to grab Macken­zie. The hypo­thet­i­cal case against him is not strong. The only pos­i­tive side of this the­o­ry is that it would elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there is an unknown psy­chopath in the build­ing now who has some­thing against me. 

My par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal stud­ies have made me famil­iar with all sorts of man­i­fes­ta­tions of human evil. I know far more about wars, purges, riots, lynch­ings, pogroms, slav­ery, secret police, con­cen­tra­tion camps, geno­cides and gen­er­al nas­ti­ness than most peo­ple would be able to absorb with­out great dis­tress. It’s the sub­ject mat­ter of my aca­d­e­m­ic inquiries and my exper­tise. But it has been many years since I’ve wit­nessed any­thing along these lines as per­son­al expe­ri­ence. For many years, my exis­tence has been over­whelm­ing­ly peace­ful and with­out fear or dan­ger — the base state of the com­fort­able Cana­di­an. Even the nas­ti­est of our politi­cians don’t shoot pup­pies in grav­el pits, or urge lunatic fol­low­ers to storm the Par­lia­ment Build­ings. Our lunatics, when we have them, are usu­al­ly not equipped with AR-15s. I live in what is con­sid­ered the “inner city” of the country’s biggest metrop­o­lis, sur­round­ed by night clubs, bars, and mar­i­jua­na shops, in a mul­ti­cul­tur­al hive of immi­grants, in the cheap­est old build­ing in the country’s most crowd­ed dis­trict. Yet I live in one of the safest places in the world, and while I occa­sion­al­ly run across some­one sketchy, I nor­mal­ly expect every pass­ing stranger to be sen­si­ble and kind. But I know that this is an excep­tion­al place and an excep­tion­al time. 

Per­haps it’s of val­ue to me to con­front again the vis­cer­al real­i­ty of evil. It’s been a long time for me, only mem­o­ries of younger and more fool­ish, risk-tak­ing days. Now I was again forced to expe­ri­ence it direct­ly instead of in the books and doc­u­ments I nor­mal­ly swim among. It was not hard for me to pic­ture the help­less ter­ror that Macken­zie expe­ri­enced in his last hours. Macken­zie was not anyone’s idea of a cute and appeal­ing pet. He was lots of work to care for. He was capa­ble of lit­tle that would enter­tain me, like his hap­py and ram­bunc­tious broth­er. He was at best only half of what he had been before, dimin­ished in mind and body. He clung to me for com­fort. In his vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, he gave me strength, and despite his fear and con­fu­sion, he had courage that put me to shame. I owe him. He was the most inno­cent, blame­less lit­tle crea­ture con­ceiv­able. He was full of love. And, objec­tive­ly, he was worth a mil­lion times more than the sadis­tic cretin who mur­dered him. I will waste no sym­pa­thy on that sort. Nor will I be despondent.

Because. Because.

Because the cretins win if you let them crush your hap­pi­ness. You may some­times find me in pain, but as long as I can muster the strength of lit­tle Macken­zie, I will res­olute­ly refuse to be unhappy.

Macken­zie in hap­pi­er times.